It shows the 2012 Fisker Karma we road-tested three weeks ago parked at a Tesla Motors dealer in Los Angeles.

But while our Fisker was running fine that day, Consumer Reports was not so lucky this week.

The magazine bought a Fisker Karma at a dealership to test it--we can only drool with envy over their budgets--only to have it die midway through their first day of testing during a routine highway speed test.

Yes, the writeup used the inevitable pun: Bad Karma. [sigh]

It's quite rare these days, though not unheard-of, for an expensive luxury performance car to be hauled away from a road test on a flatbed truck.

But it's worrisome. Sufficiently so, in fact, that Jalopnik published a reader photo it received last week of a maroon Fisker Karma parked at curbside in Southern California with its hood up and the driver on his phone--indicating that it too had some kind of mechanical problem.

During our brief New York City test drive, the Karma's instrument cluster simply went blank. To fix it, we had to park the car, turn it off, and wait five minutes for it to "go to sleep." Once we restarted, the cluster rebooted itself and we could drive off--a problem Fisker said it fixed in a subsequent software upgrade.

Fisker staff put a good face on such issues--one that we're not sure is justified.

"We rely on our early customers to identify issues like this for us," Russell Datz, Fisker's director of corporate communications, said cheerfully at the time.

Equally troublesome, among the Fiskers tested by colleagues three weeks ago, the simple act of plugging an iPhone into the USB port crashed the display monitor on the console. The company says there will be a software update coming for that one, too.

And on every Fisker we've seen, wide panel gaps yawn between the fenders and trunklid, a rubber seal bulges out of the gap between the curvaceous rear door and the adjacent fender, and the arches of the front fender and the hood edge that abuts it don't quite match.

That's not only sub-par for a $106,000 luxury vehicle, it's significant worse than any mass-market Toyota, Chevy, or Volkswagen you can buy for $20,000 today.

You want a caption? False journalism. If Tesla doesn' t sue you for this, the American public should. How dare you sully the reputation of all electric drive vehicles with the one that is having the most issues. You should be ashamed of yourself. To write in this article that "Quality is a very real worry for the fate of the undeniably sexy Karma, and perhaps for the larger plug-in car industry." is unjustified when the Leaf and Volt have already proven themselves to be high in quality, and Tesla is also proven itself to be road worthy. Start up car companies are tough to make happen - the fact that Tesla is still around with journalism like this everywhere is a testament to how good they really are - and you would put an image up to tie th

Eric
Posted: 3/9/2012 6:01am PST

them to the Karma, which is very bad on your part, and if Karma were to work, you would be suffering an ill fate right about now.

John
Posted: 3/9/2012 6:27am PST

In fairness, John Voelcker has spent a lot of time defending the Chevy Volt again unjust criticism in the media. I think Voelcker has been slow to comment about the Fisker's quality problems to give them a chance to address them.

However, it looks like Voelcker was finally motivated to write about his concerns after publicity of the Consumer Report's experience.

As for Fisker's bad experience tainting the wider EV community, you raise a good point. Perhaps the LEAF and the Volt won't be lumped into the same mental image of the Karma in consumer's minds. But given all the bad press the Volt has (undeservedly) had recently, perhaps they will be.

As for Tesla's quality, I agree with you on that.

Jeff
Posted: 3/9/2012 7:31am PST

This is a small car company issue. My experience with my Volt along with the other owner reports has the Volt in the flawless category. I think the Leaf is near flawless too. Big automakers have the resources and experience to really put their products to the test before full production. These tech glitches will be fixed and forgotten. I wish them well.

CDspeed
Posted: 3/9/2012 7:45am PST

If you noticed the only two cars gathering bad press for plug-in cars at the moment are the so called extended range cars. I wish GM and Fisker had stuck to calling them plug-in hybrids, which they both did when these cars were both in development.

John
Posted: 3/9/2012 7:58am PST

Dare I point out the "bad press" that is Tesla's "bricking" issue. I know, I know, it is not a really issue. But still bad press.

robok2
Posted: 3/9/2012 8:50am PST

@John, you really seem to ahve shifted views in the last couple of weeks. Now, the Tesla bricking issue isn't "really an issue." Seriously? A basic concern that Tesla ignored while other OEMs took care of it.

Even the lowly Buick LaCrosse mild hybrid can sit for a year or two without a charge and not completely die.

Supporing Tesla overall doesn't mean pretending that they didn't screw up when they did. It's a relatively small issue but one that there's also no excuse for it making into a production vehicle, either.

Fix the design issue, don't just tell your customers to read a manual, especially when EVs are relatively new and your competitors don't seem to have the same problem. Didn't you write the same thing?

CDspeed
Posted: 3/9/2012 11:12am PST

@ John, yes the bricking caused bad press, but it was the owner who was at fault. And to be honest I don't think the bad press the Volt has attracted is fair either. But the Volt got the bad press started, Fisker's continuing issues have kept it going, and so any little problem like Tesla's is going to get blown way out of proportion. Somewhat in the same way recalls now receive extra attention after Toyota's unintended acceleration.

John
Posted: 3/9/2012 12:52pm PST

@robok2, actually I was just trying to prevent reigniting the flaming back and forth about Tesla with that comment. I failed.

Bearing
Posted: 3/11/2012 9:28am PDT

CDspeed - I would agree with you on the Volt - It's a plug in Hybrid - Range extended EV is just a marketing term - not a sub-class of EV or even a sub-class of Hybrid. However, if I'm not mistaken the Fisker is a pure EV.

There are more comments in this thread

Bobblehead
Posted: 3/9/2012 7:44am PST

I drive a Volt. I would be very hesitant to drive a Karma regularly, even though the car would appear to be an upgrade.

Why? Because there is a full infrastructure supporting the Volt... and the car is very well vetted because of the resources of GM and shared parts with other cars (like Cruze).

A startup is OK in software... but not in a car. Better to wait at this point.

John
Posted: 3/9/2012 6:06am PST

When I hear of Fisker's quality issues, I think back to the launch of the Tesla Roadster and try to recall similar issues. Although there was some problems with loose bolts and a few software issues, Tesla seems to have done a lot better. Is this Lotus doing a better job than Valmet?

Brian
Posted: 3/9/2012 6:51am PST

Gotta ask the question - Why no mention of the panel gaps or iPhone crash in the initial write up?

John
Posted: 3/9/2012 7:36am PST

Those mentions were in the full 2012 Fisker Karma review, here:
http://www.thecarconnection.com/overview/fisker_karma_2012

Brian
Posted: 3/9/2012 12:15pm PST

That's what I get for reading the short review ;-)

CDspeed
Posted: 3/9/2012 7:34am PST

It's funny that the article mentions the body panel gap between the trunk lid and the fenders because I noticed that poor fit aswell and being that I was at dealer who also sold Aston Martins I thought "you wouldn't see that on an Aston Martin". I also noticed where the front bumper comes to a point between the headlight and the hood that the point stuck up so much I could get my finger under it. My only concern with the Karma is as I became more and more interested in buying one for myself the more I started noticing that the car had a collection of minor flaws that just didn't seem right on a car costing six figures. I think Fisker spent to much time on image and not enough time on engineering.

Francesco
Posted: 3/9/2012 8:27am PST

Caption:

Will trade my Karma for a Modes S! Deal?

RMarksEV
Posted: 3/9/2012 10:47am PST

My title would be "birds of a feather, flock together... especially dead ducks."
But my question, as an ex-auto OEM project mgr, is; do the tires rub on the fenders when turning into a sloped driveway? or coming out of a sloped parking structure over slight curb into the street. Fisker is a designer and was not going to let anyone "compromise" his design. I personally do not see enough clearance for the tires in any sort of turning and bumping situation. Maybe this is why the fenders don't fit. I can not beleive they leave the factory that way?

John
Posted: 3/9/2012 11:01am PST

@Richard: We experienced no tire rubbing at all during our test drive. But Fisker engineers did say there's "limited" suspension travel, and the entire car crashed substantially in certain types of deep potholes at certain speeds--which would back up the notion of limited compliance.

markrogo
Posted: 3/9/2012 2:11pm PST

"And on every Fisker we've seen, wide panel gaps yawn between the fenders and trunklid, a rubber seal bulges out of the gap between the curvaceous rear door and the adjacent fender, and the arches of the front fender and the hood edge that abuts it don't quite match.

That's not only sub-par for a $106,000 luxury vehicle, it's significant worse than any mass-market Toyota, Chevy, or Volkswagen you can buy for $20,000 today."

So in other words, it's like a 1980s GM. The kind of car Honda and Toyota nearly put into oblivion.

Mark Stang
Posted: 3/11/2012 12:11am PST

Sort of strange that Fisker didn't at least try and spend a good amount of time lining up the body panals on a $105,000 car. Also this thing is basically hand built and thats why it is bound to have more imperfections on body panal alignment then the mass produced robotically assembled production cars that we buy from Toyota, Honda and Ford

Roy_H
Posted: 3/11/2012 8:16am PDT

This is a perfect example of old school luxury vs new automation. Hand-built used to mean perfection. Although body panels on older luxury cars were not high tolerance like to-days cars, there was a lot of body work done on the line to make everything fit perfectly. This was time consuming and expensive, but what you expected in a premium car.